How to Get Out of a 20-Year Hole

a prison spoon, sharp teeth, a rosary

and chicken feet, a compass rose, magnetic blood

TNT, equanimity, and a diamond file for a finger;

jeweler’s glass, rubber suit, passport stamp

kick in the ass, the right shoes, the North Star

a shiv and an ampule of musk; sulfuric acid,

wooden mask, litmus test, laughing gas, atom bomb

doctor’s note, hammer of Thor, a metaphor,

a stronger rope, a longer hope, a golden tongue

le mot juste, safer roost, divining rod

echolocation and a sleeve of magical staves.

 

But in order to exit, I first had to step over the body.

---

Kristina Bicher is a poet, essayist and translator; her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Hayden’s Ferry Review ,Plume, Denver Quarterly, Narrative, Barrow Street, The Atlantic, Harvard Review and others. Author of She-Giant in the Land of Here-We-Go-Again (forthcoming from MadHat Press in 2019) and Just Now Alive (2014), she earned an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA from Harvard University.